


Flashing Lights

by snoozingkitten



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: M/M, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-10
Updated: 2013-03-10
Packaged: 2017-12-04 21:36:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/715358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snoozingkitten/pseuds/snoozingkitten
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve and the time stream don't have the best relationship.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Flashing Lights

He found himself standing on the corner, squinting at the sky with the look of someone who was well-versed in temporal displacement and has resigned himself to it already. Still he took a moment to breathe, sort himself out. It’s not at all unlike taking a hard hit to the head; ten fingers, ten toes everything moving in the right order. 

Steve, for what it is worth, only boggled a little at the fashion, the huge boxy cars, and all the people. He knew what people looked like in his time, and what they looked like in the new millennium but under no logical progression could he have imagined that this what one of the many missing years looked like. The buildings are mostly squat and a little dull, like someone was trying to beat the creativity out of them with brown-stone and perfect 90 degree angles, the anti-thesis of the swooping almost gaudy lines of the newly constructed sky-skyscrapers that wont’ exist yet—now/then. 

The people were a riot of colour, long hair spilling in sleek lines on the women or rolled into huge feathery up-dos, blocky patches of burnt oranges and lime green. 

For a few long dazed moments Steve just stood on the corner next to a phone booth and a newspaper box and tried to deal with knowing what jumping through time felt like backwards, which was not at all like jumping forward. Eventually he picked a direction and started walking to find help. 

The news paper box said it was 1974, May 2nd, the same day it was in 2013, same street corner only in the future there was no newspaper box there, squat angular and metal like a hunched bird on the corner.

Closing his eyes in one time period and opening in the next, it didn’t feel like dying not like being frozen did. Someone would notice he was missing, they will be looking for him. Would be looking for him. Now, in the future. 

Steve searched for the whole day, wandering the streets that were again familiar and alien. 

Eventually what he found was a Stark Industries subsidiary, another brown-stone building, pale grey carpeting in the lobby and so bland that it was almost painful. S.H.I.E.L.D. hadn’t been in the phone book and it was best he could do. The woman behind the desk wore bright lipstick, like she could single-handedly bring much needed life to the lobby. “Good afternoon, may I help you?”

Sitting in the small waiting room and sipping from a mug of burnt tasting coffee Steve contemplated things, he had already read through the copy of Time left out. He thought a lot about then, it was hard not to, his world had ended violently and abruptly leaving him grasping at ghosts and reeling painfully. He thought a lot about the now, flash, colour and supposedly easy living things like wi-fi and mobile phones. Steve had all the lines that he drew to define them, compartmentalizing like a pro. 

What he never thought about was the middle. The hazy span of time between the then and now, his own body frozen in time somewhere else, which is a bit of a disturbing thought when he stopped to wonder about it. He knew the history, a rough sketch of things that happened but it never really occurred to him to wonder about the people who actually had to live it. 

The man behind the desk the secretary led him too had baulked when Steve asked to be put in contact with Mr. Stark himself. So he gave him a message, considered for a long moment all the in-jokes and little ticks, things other people might not have known or picked up on. Finally what he decided on was ‘This is Steve Rogers, I believe we had a meeting at the Fondue place.’ 

It was the best thing he could think of to get Howard’s attention. Still it took the next six hours where he just hovered around the building trying not to look threatening until Howard showed up. 

That had been a fun conversation. “But you’re dead.” 

“Sort of.” Steve agreed cheerfully digging into the pile of four hamburgers that Stark bought him, older now, silver streaking his hair and wrinkles around his mouth that showed up when he smiled quick and confused. His hands were shaking. Steve hadn’t wanted to spend his own money, serial numbers wouldn’t match up, the numbers on the pennies were all wrong and it was a small thing to worry about but Bucky liked Sci-Fi books and time travel was complicated. “As far as I can tell I’m from the future and got ... sent here.” 

Howard spent a long time frowning at him while Steve ate his hamburgers, his mind working just behind brown eyes at a mile a minute every bit as quick as Steve remembered. 

It was the right choice calling Howard, he may not be the same man Steve knew, but he was smart, didn’t ask any questions that could interfere with the time line. If anyone knew about the future it was a Stark.

Things were going fine until he got into the mansion, jeez, that much space in New York must be worth an actual fortune. They were sitting in a room and Steve was listening to Howard talk, quick hands and a quick voice like he had so many ideas and so little time. At first the baby didn’t even register. It was only after Steve found himself staring in shock when he realized what this must be. 

_Oh god_. Fat little fingers curled around the arm-rest, short flat nails digging into the material as he used it to hold himself steady on chubby legs. He couldn’t have been two yet, wearing a jumper printed with little blue stars, but his eyes were bright and already too intelligent by half. He was staring up at Steve, mouth pink and wet in the way all children seemed to have, is if they are gearing up to chew on anything. 

“Anthony.” Howard said, frowning hard at the toddling child but Steve couldn’t tear his eyes away. Black smudges of lashes blinked slowly. 

He was clutching a huge chunky thing that looked like a wireless phone, fingers pressing at the blocky buttons. 

“Where is your mother?” Howard asked to himself but Steve couldn’t tear his eyes away. 

“Anthony.” Steve echoed, oddly entranced. Tony stuck the corner of the chunky phone in his mouth. “No, stop that.” Howard sighed, the gently prying the device from the toddler’s hands. Tony reached for it, making a small disgruntled sound. Howard set it down high and out of reach. “Jarvis!” Steve half expected the house to answer him only it didn’t. “I’m pretty sure it is past his bed time.”

“You’re son?” Steve asked dumbly, because Steve knew that nose, the superior look he managed even as a baby. It was amazing. 

“Yes.” Howard said slowly, obviously confused. 

“He’s beautiful.” Steve said, trying not to giggle, because that was just what you said about babies, and while he had managed to handle everything so far this was verging on too much. Tony, tiny Tony with the chubby baby fingers, was giving a surly look to the phone he couldn’t reach. 

“What?” Howard looked down at Tony for a moment, giving him a critical eye the exact way he used to look at the dismantled pieces of Hydra weaponry.

“I mean he’s handsome.” Steve said. He couldn’t help it, he scooped Tony up in his hands, sitting him down on his knee. The diaper was plush against his thigh, thick and padded. 

Tony made a soft inquiring sound. Giving Steve a long look before he grabbed at one of Steve’s fingers, pulling on it. Steve gentled his hands as much as he could, Tony was so very small, little bones, the span of his ribcage smaller than Steve’s hands. Tony made a sharp enquiring sound, gurgling in the back of his throat while Steve let him play with one of his hands instead.

“He doesn’t speak yet.” Howard said, grudgingly. Oh but when he did he was never going to stop. “Ah, Jarvis there you are, take him and bring him back to Maria.” 

“Certainly Sir.” 

Steve couldn’t help but start at the voice, there was no accent but the words were familiar. Tony spewed baby-babble happily at Jarvis as he was lifted, cradled against his shoulder carefully, none of the distance in his voice present in his actions. 

“We’re not to be disturbed.” Howard added as an afterthought. 

“Understood.” Jarvis closed to the door to the plush sitting room on the way out, Tony already squirming in his arms.

“He must be a handful.” Steve commented. 

“Who? Oh, Tony, yes. Maria does seem to have trouble keeping him from getting in the way.” 

Even if there were anything to say that wouldn’t destroy the time line, Tony would never forgive him for it. Howard was a taboo subject between them and maybe he was beginning to understand just a little. Steve held his tongue, smiling as Howard changed the subject. 

It took three days. 

Steve met Maria briefly, she said to him, “so you’re Captain America?” with an almost sad smile, clutching the stem of a martini glass delicately. He’d turned down her offer of a drink, it was late in the afternoon but she didn’t seem to think this was anything unusual. She was a beautiful woman, too skinny, he couldn’t imagine her pregnant, with perfect hair and a symmetrical smile. 

Somehow when he left he got the impression that she was faintly disappointed but he couldn’t say why. 

Twice Tony brought him the same blocky, huge phone, offering it to him with a silent stare. The second time Steve took it and pushed a few buttons just to watch Tony smile, amused by something that only he understood. That at the very least felt normal. He didn’t mean anything creepy by it but he couldn’t help but touch baby-fine hair, a thick shock of black hair (Steve had been all but bald until he was four, hair so blond as to be invisible.) The soft roundness of the baby fat of his belly. Tony was ticklish, Steve never knew that—why would he? Still it was a revelation Tony shrieking with laughter and flailing tiny limbs around. 

Either he would grow bored and toddle off or Jarvis would come and fetch him, hands always more gentle than his voice and Steve felt almost like he was learning too much about Tony, like this should be secret somehow. 

On the third night Howard got drunk, he was morose, angry, and irritated in turns. The way Tony was when he was painfully drunk, like that sort of thing could be hereditary. 

‘I know, I can’t know, but you don’t _understand_.’ Howard snarled at him, running his hands through his hair and giving Steve a devastated look. ‘Please.’ Only he was blurry with scotch, and Howard was a scientist and he knew better, asking for things he couldn’t have. Steve held his tongue until Howard wrapped one arm around himself, glaring balefully at the floor. ‘Please tell me.’ 

‘... If, if you had lived, maybe things wouldn’t have gone so far.’ He began later.

They never had that kind of relationship but Howard didn’t pull away from the one-armed hug that Steve offered him. He wanted to tell him about the arctic expedition, wanted to give him the co-ordinates. What was the worst that could happen? Would it change history that much? Natasha wasn’t born yet, Clint might be, he wasn’t sure. Could he stop Bruce from becoming the Hulk? Would Tony forgive him for taking away a rebirth through pain and suffering? 

‘If you hadn’t died, I wouldn’t have.’ Howard didn’t cry but he looked like he wanted too. 

Steve bit his tongue and Howard breathed slowly, smelling like a distillery. He’d never really thought about the in between years. 

\--

Steve had been sleeping, it was the displacement that woke up, dropping a sudden two feet onto a hard floor. He snapped too, coming awake instantly and keeping his head from smacking off the floor, curling his body and rolling himself into a crouch coming up with his arms up in a defensive stance. 

“Welcome back.” Clint crouched on the floor looking at him with a crooked smile. “Nice jammies.” 

Steve ignored that, looking around. They were fine sleep clothes. 

He was in the Baxter building, had to be, the chaotic mess of machinery was completely different than Tony’s work shop. Meaning Richards was probably around, probably several places around the room in fact. He blurrily looked up at Tony, who looked like he hadn’t slept in the full three days, bruised around the edges, his beard looking a little blurry. 

“Do you have him?” Fury’s voice had the tinny quality of a speakerphone, it came from everywhere. Steve couldn’t help but think about Tony’s fascination with the cordless phone. 

“Affirmative.” Natasha answered. 

“Alright, bring him back to base for debriefing ASAP.” 

“Yessir.” Clint replied, straightening from his crouch fluidly. 

“Can I at least change first?” Steve asked, looking at Bruce who gave him a small, fond quirking smile. The whole gang was here, with the exception of Thor who came and went as he pleased when he wasn’t needed a Prince thick with responsibilities. 

He ended up changing into a spare S.H.I.E.L.D. uniform, and it was ungodly early in the morning, the streets almost empty at 4:30am as empty as New York the city of insomniacs ever got. Most of the team looked wide awake, Johnny Storm had poked his head in as they were leaving, ‘everything cool?’

‘Peachy.’ Bruce mumbled. 

Nick Fury was dressed and every bit as intimidating as ever even at 05:00 when they rolled up to the main conference room of the Triskelion. Then again Clint and Natasha were both dressed in full costume and looked no worse for the hour and he hadn’t found that completely odd either. 

“Report.” Fury said in lieu of a greeting. 

“We caught the guy, got the time co-ordinates, Dr. Richards did the math, I built the thingie and bam, one Captain America.” 

“Thingie, Stark? Really?” Fury arched an eyebrow at him. “Do you think you could be any more specific?” 

“Temporal displacement-- re-placment-er.” Tony said with a vauge hand-wave. On second thought he looked like he had gone more than three days without sleep. “The details are so complex there is no way you would understand.” 

“Try me.” Fury replied with a calm look. 

“Once we had Timeslip in custody we could isolate the variance in frequency he used in the initial attack, he causes electrons to flip-flop so rapidly that it creates a stable quantum tunnelling effect that causes a temporary link between two temporal planes. With a little bit of elbow grease and some thirteen dimensional theoretical mathematics we managed to reverse the effect and pull Steve back through. Bam. Captain America _like I said_.”

“It is all very complicated.” Bruce added, tapping the side of his cheek. “That’s an approximate explanation. You already know the details on the capture of Timeslip.” 

“Wham-bam-thank you ma’am.” Clint added, miming the pull of a bow with his fingers. Hawkeye and Black Widow were very good at what they did. You didn’t see them coming until it was too late. 

“That will be all Agent Barton. Captain? You didn’t break the time stream did you?” Fury looked at him.

“No sir.” Steve said smartly and Natasha gave him a small quirking smile, obviously amused. Fury gave him a little half-smile. 

“Gimme a debrief then you can all go home.”

Steve opened his mouth and paused. The words felt private, he cut a glance to Tony, before looking back at Fury. “I stayed with a friend, in a mansion on 5th.” He said slowly. Tony stopped, the nervous tapping of his fingers cutting out suddenly like someone took the needle of a record player, couldn’t have been more obvious if he tried. Steve watched him out of the corner of his eye, he was pale and tired looking but managed a whole new level of pallid, no one else even tried to look subtle turning to look at him. “Stark, Howard, let me stay with him for three days. I stayed out of the public eye, didn’t give anything away.”

Peggy was already married. It wouldn’t have been right to call her. Steve wouldn’t be back for another almost forty years. Not really. 

Tony stood up, full of drama, chair teetering but not crashing to the floor. “That’s my cue.” He said flippantly and was gone. 

“Sonuvabitch never told me why he started looking for you in the 70s.” Fury said, his mouth quirking into a rare smile. 

“That means that the Captain is a self-perpetuating time loop.” Bruce said with a troubled frown. Steve didn’t want to think about it, he didn’t get on too well with time. 

It took four days to engineer a way to bump into Tony again, it was as if he had stepped into a less extreme time slip again, going back to the beginning days of the team when Tony avoided him, and thank god he did because they had nothing but cutting words for each other. Still he felt like they needed to talk, not about it, but about anything, guy stuff.

“I met Jarvis.” He began, catching Tony cornered by the coffee maker, sipping from a mug. He went tight and tense, obviously uncomfortable with the subject. He didn’t think they would ever be able to talk about Howard, and maybe Steve didn’t want to. Then and now were two completely different times and blurring the edges between them never seemed to end in anything buy nightmares of cold mountains and the low electric buzz of hydra weaponry. “The human one I mean. He never had a British accent.” 

Tony paused for a long time before a small smile curled at the edge of his mouth, fond and proud all at once. “Nope, made in America.”

“So, JARVIS?” Steve asked, it seemed like a safe subject. JARVIS was Tony Stark’s child and crowning achievement the world’s most advanced AI. 

“I never wanted to rebuild him.” Tony said sounding a little affronted. “The name is nothing more than coincidence. I’m pretty sure he’s rolling in his grave as we speak.” Tony’s grin was wide and amused and Steve wanted to pat himself on the back for a bomb well defused even if he didn’t believe him at all. 

“I don’t know. I think they would get on well.” Steve offered and Tony pulled a face at him. 

Tony was temperamental at best, but after that he seemed to stop outright ignoring Steve, edging back into interactions like two normal guys. Steve almost asked about the house on 5th several times but it never seemed right. Sometimes he told Tony about his own childhood. It felt fair somehow. Stories of scraped knees and Bucky all covered in mud giving him the stink-eye while Steve laughed so hard it was got hard to breathe. 

Sometimes he did bring it up; because he couldn’t not. 

Steve caught his chin in one hand and tipped Tony’s face up for a kiss. Tony hummed lazily, the sun spilled golden in the morning light through the open window warming the skin it touched. Tony stretched like a cat, lazy and indulgent and Steve reached across the bed to haul him into his arms. Tony fit tucked under his chin like he was born to be there. 

“You know,” Steve began, pressing the words into Tony’s hair and letting his hands slide down Tony’s back, smooth and firm like he was petting him. When he got to the small of his back he pulled Tony closer, this close it was almost too hot, Tony’s skin so warm that it caught on his own in a delicious catch and slide. He pressed his half-hard dick against Tony’s hip and pressed his face to his hair. “You were a really cute baby.” 

“Oh god.” Tony groaned, digging his nails into Steve’s shoulder. “Don’t talk about that when I want to fuck you. That’s just twisted, what the hell is wrong with you?” 

Steve chuckled, shifting his fingers down to press against Tony’s hole, it had to be sensitive, Steve hadn’t been gentle last night and Tony bit off a gasp against his shoulder.

**Author's Note:**

> Unbeta-ed, feel free to point out errors so that they can be corrected. 
> 
> Do you know how many times I had to physically stop myself from using the term 'timey-wimey'? So much self-control.


End file.
